Director, Strategy and Corporate Strategy

Location: Kitchener, Ontario
- The **City of Kitchener** is a vibrant and dynamic city of approximately 270,000, in the heart of southwestern Ontario. As the largest municipality in Waterloo Region, Kitchener continues to be poised for development and growth, enhancing its reputation as a leader in city-building and innovation, with nationally recognized strategies to build its neighbourhoods, its digital infrastructure and its diverse economy.
The **City of Kitchener** is WHERE you want to work Learn more about the top reasons to join us:
**Why work at the City of **Kitchener**

Position Overview:
As the **Director, Strategy and Corporate Performance**, you will be responsible for providing high level vision, direction and oversight to the City's strategic planning, governance and performance management processes. You will engage leaders within the organization while creating a bold and compelling vision for how the City of Kitchener will serve our community in the future, working at all levels to generate the desire to build a high-performance organization. You will support the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) in setting medium to long-term goals around desired strategic outcomes for the organization that have the complete commitment of all members of the Corporate Leadership Team (CLT).
You are a visible and effective leader, responsible for the design, development and management of a corporate governance structure that drives core service performance excellence based on continuous improvement processes. You will maintain CLT focus and attention on the progress being made on strategic goals, engaging leaders around the issues and risks, and creating space for dialogue to solve problems collaboratively. In addition, you will lead complex, sensitive and high-profile projects in support of the CAO's mandate, which includes strategy, research, policy development and inter-municipal collaboration.
You will pro-actively build internal and external connections and relationships, and facilitate cross-functional collaboration to achieve success. You will champion a culture of leadership, performance and accountability for results. You will also be responsible for overseeing the business operations within the Office of the CAO, including budget development and monitoring, communications support to the CAO, business plan preparation, etc. You will oversee a high-performing professional team responsible for: strategic planning, business planning, performance reporting, internal audit, (including service reviews across the organization), policy, government relations strategy and enhancing a culture of continuous improvement.

**Responsibilities**:
Strategy
- Provides direction and oversight to the City's strategic planning process.
- Actively communicates with all levels of employees on an ongoing basis using a variety of methods to build awareness and enthusiasm for the strategic work and achievements.
- Facilitates the corporate leadership team (CLT) in establishing a long-term vision and goals for strategic outcomes based on input from the community, Council and staff.
- Generates passion and energy to maintain forward momentum on strategic goals through recognition and celebration of incremental achievements.
- Looks for opportunities to empower leaders to make a contribution to expected outcomes and find/leverage opportunities that will contribute to the shared vision.

Governance
- Facilitates CLT team development.
- Facilitates the development and management of CLT's strategic work plan and progress review.
- Ensures that accountability for results is established at a team level with CLT and through the individual performance objectives of CLT members.
- Designs, develops and manages complex organization-wide initiatives to improve governance and organizational performance based on CLT direction and employee input and feedback to ensure they are practical and easily understood.
- Coordinates various integration and communication mechanisms e.g., CLT-management connection, staff supporting continuous improvement activities across the organization, change and communications plan development/support to achieve strategic objectives.
- Advise and support the CAO on ongoing change and improvement initiatives.
- Stays engaged on important projects and initiatives to ensure the work continues to be in alignment with expected outcomes.
- Fosters strong relationships with CLT, corporate management team and Council
- Attend Corporate Leadership Team meetings.

Corporate Performance
- Provides high level direction and oversight to the City's internal audit, performance management and service review program of work.
- Introduces new processes, tools and accountabilities for core service performance management to gain buy-in and commitment and consistent corporate-wide adoption.
- Engages senior leaders around performance gaps, issues and risks to move them towards decisive action that will achieve expected results.
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